From Occupied Palestine

Missing the government of thieves
AMIRA HASS
Ha'aretz, 28 September 2006

Slogans shouted at rallies sound better when they rhyme. "Not Ismail, not Haniyeh, we want back the government of haramiyeh." Haramiyeh means thieves, and the protesters in Ramallah - Palestinian Authority workers who have not received their salaries for the last seven months - shouted what can be heard in conversations in the streets of the West Bank and Gaza Strip: Hamas may be clean, but the Fatah thieves are preferable. After all, the reasoning goes, when Fatah was in power, our salaries were assured.

Israeli troops raid Nablus, Jenin financial institutions
ALI DARAGHMEH
Associated Press, 20 September 2006

Nablus -- Israeli troops raided the homes and offices of 14 money changers in the West Bank early Wednesday, confiscating nearly $1.5 million (euro1.2 million) the army said came mostly from Iran and was earmarked for terrorism.

At least eight currency exchange offices and a small bank were destroyed in the raids in Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarem and Ramallah. Troops arrested two men who had pistols and hunting rifles in their homes, the army said.

In the name of security, but not for its sake
AMIRA HASS
Ha'aretz, 20 September 2006

Six Palestinian churches in the West Bank and Gaza Strip suffered damage and arson attempts in reaction to the words of Pope Benedict XVI. Palestinian spokesmen of all stripes condemned these attacks and said that the Palestinian nation - Christians and Muslims alike - is one, and is united in its struggle against the occupation. Reports on the attacks in the Palestinian media described the perpetrators as "unknown." In the Palestinian subtext, "unknown" implies "of suspicious identity," a phrase that borders on a half-concealed accusation that Israel's Shin Bet security services sent agents provocateurs.

The children killed in a war the world doesn't want to know about
DONALD MACINTYRE
Independent, 19 September 2006

Rafah -- Nayef Abu Snaima says his 14-year-old cousin Jihad had been sitting on the edge of an olive grove talking animatedly to him about what he would do when he grew up when he was killed instantly by an Israeli shell.

Olmert should have more of an insight than most into terrorism
GEOFFREY WHEATCROFT
Guardian, 14 September 2006

Sixty years ago the sort of atrocity that Israel's leaders habitually condemn helped bring the country into being

After Tony Blair's latest - and perhaps final - trip to the Levant, the TUC must have seemed almost a relief. There were no banners in Brighton reading "Blair, you killer, go to hell", like those that greeted him in Lebanon last weekend - on a visit that seemed a very long time since the prime minister told the Labour conference, in the wake of September 11: "The starving, the wretched, the dispossessed, the ignorant, those living in want and squalour from the deserts of northern Africa to the slums of Gaza, to the mountain ranges of Afghanistan: they too are our cause."

Palestinian displacement: a case apart?
University of Oxford's Refugee Studies Centre
Forced Migration Review 26 (September 2006)

complete issue: PDF; Doc; single article PDF

The boy who was buried twice
GIDEON LEVY
Ha'aretz, 9 September 2006

Saja'iya, Gaza City -- Abdullah a-Zakh identified his son's body by the belt. The shoes and socks also looked familiar, irrefutable proof that he had lost his son. In the morgue of Shifa Hospital, after hours of searching, he found the bottom part of the boy's body. The next day, when Operation "Gan Na'ul" - "Locked Kindergarten" - ended and the Israel Defense Forces exited the Saja'iya neighborhood of Gaza, leaving behind 22 dead and large-scale destruction, the other body parts were found.

'Gaza is a jail. Nobody is allowed to leave. We are all starving now'
PATRICK COCKBURN
Independent, 8 September 2006

Gaza -- Gaza is dying. The Israeli siege of the Palestinian enclave is so tight that its people are on the edge of starvation. Here on the shores of the Mediterranean a great tragedy is taking place that is being ignored because the world's attention has been diverted by wars in Lebanon and Iraq.

New Yorkers to study about Israel
YANIV HALILI
Yediot Aharanoth, 8 September 2006

NEW YORK - The New York City Council's education committee approved a curriculum on Israel initiated by the public relations department of the Israeli Consulate in New York.

The curriculum will be integrated into the training program for educators teaching in 1,400 public high schools in New York City. The teachers will be able to register to a 30-hour course dealing with the history of the State of Israel, its economy, the high-tech industry, Israeli art and Ethiopian Jews.

Israel said to fear war crimes charges
MATTI FRIEDMAN
Associated Press, 4 September 2006

Jerusalem -- Three weeks after a cease-fire ended Israel's monthlong war against Hezbollah guerrillas, Israel is increasingly concerned that government officials and army officers traveling abroad could face war crimes charges, a Foreign Ministry official said Monday.